Writers saw a number of studies in Q1 that found AI machines are continuing to automate what they used to do for a living.

The pitch from AI evangelists is that all the automation poses no threat.

Instead, AI machines will free-up writers to engage in more creative work, they say.

But that’s tough to sell, given that a new study released in Q1 found 79% of marketers believe AI will outdo writers by 2024.

And it’s an even tougher sell when your realize yet another news publisher discovered in Q1 that AI can crank-out virtually limitless business stories — which used to be put together by humans.

That said, the gee-whiz aspect of AI-writing pressed-on unabated in Q1, with news of:

~An automated meeting transcriber that also interprets and makes note of body language at the meeting

~An AI writer you can use for free

~An AI tool that makes it much harder to plagiarize content off the Web

~An in-depth, 33-page report that makes a strong business case for adding AI writing to your business

Here’s a look at the details behind the relentless acceleration of automated writing — thrilling or threatening, depending on your perspective — in Q1:

*AI is Coming for Copywriters: Brian Nizinsky, a digital marketing manager at Paychex, says copywriters need to brace themselves for the pervasive proliferation of automated writing across their profession.

Nizinsky cites a 2021 study by Drift and Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute, which found 79% of marketers believe AI will be able to outdo writers by 2024.

Nizinsky’s reaction: “Most marketers aren’t willing or able to invest significant time and energy into creating effective marketing copy — they don’t have the in-house expertise or the funds to hire someone else.

“So why not let machines do what they do best — produce large amounts of consistent content faster than any human ever could — and use the savings to hire creative professionals who can dream-up truly unique campaign ideas?”

In a perfect world, sounds great.

But in a ‘good enough’ world, who knows if all those creative professionals would be hired — or even keep their current jobs.

For an alternate perspective on the impact of AI-generated writing on jobs, check-out: “The Robots Cometh: How artificial intelligence is automating writing jobs,” by Joe Dysart.

*Video Meeting Transcriber ‘Headroom’ Also Interprets Body Language: In the “Next Best Thing to Being There” Department, add video meeting software Headroom.

The tool not only transcribes what is said at meetings into text — it also analyzes the body language of a meeting’s participants to give you a better feel for what was really going on.

Says Headroom CEO Julian Green: “Together, these signals allow us to automatically produce a highlight version of the meeting that is ten times shorter — you can skip between highlights and get a good sense of an hour-long meeting in minutes.”

*AI and Journalism: A Snapshot from Editor & Publisher: Any time one of the world’s oldest journalism magazines weighs in on AI and journalism, most editors and writers can’t help but look.

With this piece, Editor & Publisher concludes AI-powered journalism is invigorating — and a bit ominous.

Observes Jeremy Gilbert, director of strategic initiatives, The Washington Post: “I think there are a lot of different, pretty interesting things we can do with AI.

“And it runs the gamut from tools that assist humans with their reporting to algorithms that actually tell stories directly from data.”

Cautions Editor & Publisher writer Rob Tornoe: “What happens when robots are deployed by less-than-savory owners already willing to trade human capital to pad the bottom line?

“Sadly, I don’t think we need a robot to write that story.”

*Study: Watch for AI-Powered Personalized Content to Become More a Thing: AI-generated writing company Persado has released a new study finding that increasing numbers of marketers will be using AI-powered personalization in coming years.

In fact, more than 70% of respondents said they are using — or plan to use — AI for the personalization of texts, converting speech to text and extracting data from texts in the coming year, according to the study.

Persado — which started as an AI writing firm specializing in auto-generating personalized subject headlines for marketing emails — stunned many copywriters back in 2019 by inking a five-year deal with Chase.

Under the agreement, Chase brought Persado onboard to auto-generate slogans and other ad copy for its credit card and mortgage businesses.

*Major US News Outlet Adds More AI Writing: McClatchy is expanding its use of AI-generated real estate news in a number of its markets.

Using AI tech from United Robots, the news company plans to churn-out more automated articles on real estate sales — this time in California.

Also on the menu are automated articles featuring some analysis of some real estate markets in California.

The AI-generated articles will also include property images and satellite maps from Google, which partners with United Robots in automated news.

The newspaper chain made headlines late last year after it began publishing AI-generated real estate news at the Miami Herald.

*AI Writing: Now Play Free: Search engine You.com now offers an AI-generated writing tool that you can play with for free.

Observes Kyle Wiggers, a writer for VentureBeat: “In its quest to recalibrate expectations around search engines, You.com is today launching a search app built in collaboration with OpenAI that generates snippets — or even documents — of text when given a prompt.

Socher (Richard Sohcher, CEO, You.com) calls it a ‘personal AI writer.’”

Dubbed YouWrite, operation of the AI writing tool is fairly simple: Type a subject topic into YouWrite and you’ll be presented with a number of tweaks to control what YouWrite brings back — including paragraph length, target audience and more detail on your topic.

Adds Wiggers: “You.com will offer YouWrite for free to start.

“But frequent users and those who use it to generate longer outputs (think essays) will eventually have to pay for the privilege.”

Socher says that pricing hasn’t been decided yet.

YouWrite uses the supercomputer-driven GPT-3 as its underlying writing engine.

*77% Publishers: AI Critical to Future Success: A new study finds 77% of news publishers see AI as a key to their success during the next three years.

Publishers featured in the study currently use AI to help auto-generate news stories, manage paywalls, tamp-down reader churn and auto-surface archived content where appropriate.

Says Dean Roper, director of insights, World Association of News Publishers, the group that spearheaded the study:

“This is not relegated to just publishers with deep pockets, nor to the usual pioneers in the business.

“Small publishers all over the world are innovating, partnering (and) developing AI solutions for their companies.”

*Norway Publisher Scores Big With Automated Business News: Regional news outlet Bergens Tidende says automated business stories have been a big hit with its readers.

The hyper-local content attracted two million new page views for the news outlet, July-to-December 2021, according to the publisher.

Bergens Tidende uses AI-generated writing from United Robots to auto-convert company annual reports into short news summaries.

Says Jan Stian, project lead, Bergens Tidende: “The business bot imitates the whole spectrum of journalism.

“And on top of that it is hyper-local — as well as niche.

“Hyper-local, because you can read about the corner shop or the favorite restaurant in your street.

“Niche, because it sheds light on entire local industries.”

*AI Plagiarism Checkers Making It Tougher to Cheat: Stealing content off the Web to use in your college paper is getting a bit tougher — due to AI plagiarism checkers, according to SmartDataCollective.

Observes Sean Parker, a writer for SmartDataCollective: “These programs use algorithms to send Web crawlers across the Internet.

“As a result, they can index countless Web pages that don’t have the ‘nocrawl’ attribute in their meta tags.”

*Brass Tacks: An In-Depth Look at Adding AI-Generated Writing to Your Business: Market research firm Forrester offers an extremely detailed look at how AI writing can transform a company with this 33-page report.

Specifically, the study focuses on how AI writing from Arria NLG — also known as Natural Language Generation — can realize a 209% return on investment if implemented wisely.

Arria can bring about this change by auto-writing everyday business reports, according to the Forrester report.

This in-depth look at Arria’s tech is perfect for a company decision-maker looking to dispense with the sizzle and dig into the real numbers and real results promised by AI-generated writing.

For an in-depth look at how automated company report writing from Arria — and similar AI writing companies — works, check out: “Company Reports That Write Themselves,” by Joe Dysart.

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–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.